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CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Embracing The Auteurs At Cannes

This year's Cannes International Film Festival is, as always, an embrace of auteurs.

It started at the opening ceremony with Woody Allen making his first Cannes appearance, although six of his movies have played here, including ''Manhattan.'' He received the Palm of Palms, an award for his entire career, and he looked suitably touched and unnerved by the thunderous approval.

It's touching to see the French poster for Mr. Allen's latest film, ''Hollywood Ending,'' gracing the Croisette, the beachfront promenade that is the city's main street. The poster has a cartoonish rendering of him that is similar to the line drawing from the old ''Woody Allen'' comic strip of the 1970's.

The auteur ideology extends to the feature competition jury, which has the idiosyncratic directors David Lynch (whose ''Mulholland Drive'' first made waves at last year's festival), Walter Salles, Bille August, Raul Ruiz and Claude Miller. (The full jury is built around what the festival terms ''one of the most important relationships in film'': between male directors and female stars. The male jurors are joined by Sharon Stone and Michelle Yeoh, who broke hearts and legs in the 2000 Cannes entry ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'')

And the competition itself has its share of entries from lionized directors, including Roman Polanski, David Cronenberg, Amos Gitai, Marco Bellocchio and Abba Kiarostami. The noncompetition premieres come from Brian de Palma and Atom Egoyan, as well as George Lucas's ''Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones.''

Perhaps it was felt even here that after 9/11 a degree of comforting consistency was called for, something that the tumult of the recent French elections only underscored. Well-known filmmakers are often welcomed at Cannes, but this year, the pile-up seems particularly striking.

Some are perhaps too becalmed as exemplars of the status quo, like Robert Guédiguian's tear-stained melodrama ''Marie-Jo et Ses Deux Amours.'' The torn-between-two-lovers title says it all; ''Marie-Jo'' has a story line that could be from 1949, in which the distraught heroine suffers and swoons over an extramarital affair full of meaning while she's still in love with her husband. ''Marie-Jo'' is a bon-bon of nudity and guilt, and it ends with a compromise that hammers home the heroine's problem; if it were about a man and two women, it would probably have been a comedy. As Marie-Jo, Ariane Ascaride manages a performance lined with mirth and melancholy. Hers is the most fully defined character -- the only one, really -- though as her daughter, Julie-Marie Parmentier in her wildfire-like willfulness blows hot and fierce and matches well emotionally with Ms. Ascaride's performance. (Mr. Guédiguian has worked with them before and expertly keeps a sturdy finger on their pulses.)

Cannes has several notable features this season. Several younger directors still scaling the career path -- Alexander Payne and Paul Thomas Anderson, both Americans -- are represented. Mr. Payne's ''About Schmidt,'' which he directed and co-wrote, is a graceful meditation on the nature of loneliness starring Jack Nicholson as an insurance executive who has to fill his hours after retirement. Mr. Payne, besides showing his interest in the complexity of family life, keeps his usually glamorous star from unleashing his charismatic grin.

Mr. Anderson's picture, ''Punch Drunk Love,'' brings to mind the consideration that Cannes films in the past few years have often been Oscar bait. Does that mean that Adam Sandler, its star, will be cast on the waters for Academy voters next year?

The first documentary in the competition here since 1956 is Michael Moore's ''Bowling at Columbine,'' which could be seen as a companion to his scorched-earth best-seller, ''Stupid White Men.'' ''Columbine,'' which takes slaps at racism and the National Rifle Association and its president, Charlton Heston, in typical Moore fashion, is also the first competition film to be picked up for American distribution, by United Artists for roughly $1.5 million.

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''Columbine'' has something in common with several other films vying for jury prizes. It was shot digitally, an acknowledgement of the incremental revolution that the technology is working on the movie world. (Mr. Lucas's ''Clones'' was also shot digitally and received this week's most up-to-the-moment digital projection at the Palais, perhaps the best place in the world to see a movie.)

One digital videotape presentation is a festival standout, if only because it is a comedy by Michael Winterbottom: ''24-Hour Party People.'' The cinematographer, Robby Muller, persuaded the director to use the process, which adds a needed lowlife crust to what is a robustly good bio-film about Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan), theRenaissance-man legend in his own biography, who was responsible for the genesis and eventual flameout of Manchester-based Factory Records, the British music label/collective. It is said that Mr. Winterbottom had to be convinced that ''People'' was funny; the British release, which did middling well, didn't make note of that fact.

The book has an artful-dodger grace and a running commentary from Mr. Wilson, who is a lovably pretentious pop culture chronicler. It is both boisterous and in time, as is the film. One unforgettably wonderful moment comes during a performance of the New Order song ''Blue Monday,'' which is performed by John Simm, who plays New Order's singer/guitarist, Bernard Sumner. He has an astonishing vocal and physical resemblance to Mr. Sumner.)

The comedy stems from Mr. Wilson's not being nearly as self-aware as he thinks, despite his continual chatter. Mr. Coogan's deft, daft performance is just bewilderingly good. He's an endlessly charming rotter who believes everyone should live well, but he should be first at the trough.

''People'' starts with an occasion that set the world-changing label into motion -- a live performance by the Sex Pistols with fewer than 40 people in the audience; that disparate crowd included members of what would later become New Order (initially Joy Division) and Mick Hucknall, the russet-curled leader of the soulsters Simply Red.

There's often a quiet theme in the programming at Cannes, and this year it is that in addition to ''People,'' two other pictures in competition were made by British directors. Mike Leigh has ''All or Nothing,'' another ensemble-cast examination of working class British life that is as well served in many of the smaller roles as it in the larger ones. And Ken Loach has ''Sweet Sixteen.''

Perhaps a stronger theme is that some of the movies that have been shown so far weave adultery into the storytelling; it is an element in ''All or Nothing,'' ''People,'' ''Marie-Jo'' and ''Schmidt'' and is perhaps another example of the French aphorism about consistency: ''Plus ça change. . . .''

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A version of this article appears in print on May 18, 2002, on Page B00007 of the National edition with the headline: CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Embracing The Auteurs At Cannes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe